There are no prerequisites for unblocking Facebook and Instagram – Kommersant

The head of Roskomnadzor, Andrei Lipov, said that it is not worth expecting the blocking from the social networks Facebook and Instagram (banned in the Russian Federation; owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation) to be lifted in the near future.

“Today there are no prerequisites for this,” said Mr. Lipov, answering questions from journalists at the Spectrum forum in Sochi (quote from “Interfax”).

Facebook and Instagram were locked in Russia in March 2022 by decision of Roskomnadzor. This happened after the social media company Meta was declared extremist by a court decision, and its activities in the Russian Federation were banned.

The court’s decision was a response to the publication of an internal letter from the company, which announced the lifting of the ban on the publication of calls for violence against Russians and the Russian military. As a Meta representative later explained, they allowed calls for violence against the military, but intended to limit such attacks against ordinary Russian citizens.

In 2022, a group of State Duma deputies from the New People party appealed to the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor with a request to consider unblocking Instagram, but the departments stated that there were no grounds for this.

Alexander Kislov